Seye Dele Talks About His Childhood & Founding Pade in Today’s “Doing Life With…”

I’m well. Thank you very much. How do you do?

I was born in Lagos but most of my childhood was spent in Ibadan. My dad was pretty old when he had me, so he moved us to Ibadan because he wanted a calmer, quieter retirement. The aspect of my childhood that influenced me the most was that we didn’t watch a lot of TV or the prevalent entertainment options of the 90s like video games and cartoons. All we had for entertainment was books, so we read every book in my father’s huge library. This helped me develop a very curious mind which I think is the basis of all genius.

I have always been fascinated by computers and wanted to study Computer Science, unfortunately, I was given admission to study Agric Science in Abeokuta where I did considerably well, albeit begrudgingly lol. So when I finished Uni, I went to Abuja to do my NYSC and was determined to learn how to become a computer scientist all by myself. This is where I met Lekan, my current business partner and cofounder for Pade. Here, we started working together building applications (he was way more senior to me at the time) for government parastatals, by 2014 I relocated to Lagos and began working in tech and e-commerce handling roles across Strategy, Planning and Marketing. After doing this for about 6 years, I reconnected with Lekan to build our proprietary solution for the African market and this is what turned out to be Pade.

Haha. Well, frankly, I do not agree. That’s not a very holistic view of the current Nigerian tech ecosystem. People underestimate how quickly social media allows us to disseminate information these days, and the impact of that is that bad news which normally travels faster than good news has now been amplified to travel at the speed of light. In the days of the bankers (whom I totally respect), bad things also happened, but they had far more control over what kind of narratives to push into the public domain. The solutions being built today are also very important pillars of society, can you imagine a world today without Flutterwave, Paystack and Moniepoint? We are still a long way from maturity and all that is happening is just part of the building process.

Pade helps organisations simplify their work by reliably automating their human resource processes. It also helps employees live a better quality of life by connecting them, from within their Pade app, to financial solutions that make their lives better. How we’re different is that we are pioneering a proper synergy between employer and employee and 3rd party providers all in the context of the software that governs their work. So you no longer need to interact with several software providers to manage your employees, pay them, remit their taxes and other statutory obligations and the employees can directly interact with all that information to access financial solutions that better their lives.

Is there any personal experience that influenced starting Pade?

In the organisations I worked for between 2014 and 2020, I always noticed a big disconnect between employers’ and employees’ engagement, usually from money issues. So our idea was to build a company that helps improve employees’ engagement by efficiently solving payroll and payment issues for both parties. The company was supposed to be called Paid.com (which is actually the correct way to pronounce Pade).

Africa suffers from a serious lack of resources – financial, human capital, infrastructural and much more. All of these combine to create a very harsh business environment for you to operate your business. An African founder needs significantly more resoluteness than most, to be able to build a successful company. Even things seemingly simple like hiring are notably more complicated and risky on the continent than in other places. The only way to mitigate is to first of all be aware that you need to put 10x effort into everything you are going to do before you even set out to become na entrepreneur, and then also pray frequently to whatever you believe in.

What gives me the most joy is when we receive feedback from employers and employees about how one of our software products has significantly improved their lives. It is pretty fulfilling to know that something you built from scratch has such far-reaching effects and is helping to make the world a better place.

To be very honest, my biggest goal in life is that my kids should be better, faster, more talented and more successful than me. I want to be able to give them the advantage to surmount the obstacles in life that I unfortunately had to grapple with on my own. Also, I want to help build the products and infrastructure that help Africa become more productive and more successful, Africa has the world’s youngest population but we suffer the slowest rate of development. I want to be part of the group that collaborates to help Africa meet its potential.

My typical day starts around 7 am. I wake up and check the news of the day on Twitter and read a few articles on Tech blogs – local or foreign. Then I help with getting my kids ready for school. I typically get to the office around 9 or 10 am and always make a strong cup of coffee, and meet with various members of my team to discuss any strategic or operational concerns. Then I work in my office quietly throughout the day, have meetings with my cofounder or any external meetings I have scheduled, and occasionally take breaks to gist and bant with my team. When my energy is depleted, I listen to music or check Twitter again, tweet a few jokes, and then resume work at 7 pm. When I get home, I play with my kids, help put them to bed and go over the events of the day with my wife. Then I usually resume work at midnight for a couple hours and go to bed around 2 or 3 am.

I enjoyed listening to Masters of Scale before we started to build the company. It gave me a lot of ideas and broadened my worldview but I don’t have much time to listen to podcasts anymore. For books, I think every entrepreneur should read Shoe Dog by Phil Knight, and then I’m really, really big on history books. Because I think there’s nothing we’re facing now that hasn’t happened before.

 My advice to him is to not hope to become Seye Dele, and he should just focus on being his own person. The thing that has worked the most for me is honesty – in your dealings and also in yourself. The ability to introspect and actually recognise where you are in your journey and then maintain a high-value network because we actually do rise by lifting or being lifted by others.

Music, really. I occasionally tweet that music saves my life every day and it is true. The beauty contained in African music is unparalleled and I appreciate it every day. I do have a studio called BetterSound where I get people to come and create their music and help them amplify their voices via YouTube and social media.

Thank you for being on Doing Life With…, Seye

Thank you for having me, BellaNaija.

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Many thanks to Seye Dele for having this conversation with us and answering all our questions – and swiftly too, we must add.

Do you love this content, have any feedback for us or want to be a BellaNaija Features contributor? We’d love to read from you. Shoot us an email: [email protected]. Join us on Saturday for the next episode!